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Hot summer author: Lily Koppel

The book 'The Astronauts Wives Club: A True Story' by Lily Koppel, Grand Central, 288 pp. What it's about: Non-fiction look at the women behind the men who flew in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions

The Astronauts Wives Club: A True Story by Lily Koppel (Grand Central)

What it's about: Non-fiction look at the women behind the men who flew in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions in the 1960s; based on recent interviews with the wives (from Betty Grissom to Rene Carpenter), now in their 70s and 80s.

Why it's hot: This female version of The Right Stuff arrives in a pop-culture world smitten with the '60s (Exhibit A: AMC's Mad Men).

A taste: "Now their husbands were astronauts, and they too were instant celebrities."

Author Lily Koppel in her New York home.(Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY)

The author:

Quick bio: Koppel, 32, lives in Manhattan with her husband, writer Tom Folsom, 39 (author of Hopper, a biography of Dennis Hopper). Born in Chicago, she attended Barnard, worked at The New York Times and then published her first non-fiction book, The Red Leather Diary, in 2008.

Fun fact: When she and her future husband were first dating, he gave her a copy of The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe's space-race classic, and told her she had to read it. "I wasn't really a very big Tom Wolfe fan. But I was absolutely converted."

Inspiration: A Life magazine photo of the wives in "candy-colored minidresses with their skyrocketing beehives, all posed around a plaster of Paris model of the moon," which she spotted while looking through Norman Mailer's book MoonFire.

On life as an "Astrowife': "They were held up as the quintessential perfect American housewife. …You see that perfect Jello mold shatter by end of the '60s with the first space divorce."

Real housewives: "One of the first things I learned was just how invaded they were by the press at the time. I saw them as America's first reality stars. Here were these unknown women whose lives were turned inside out."

Heroes in their own right: "They were the quiet heroes back at home, back on earth. They weren't really given the credit they deserved."

Up next: She's working on a novel. "I'm still very interested in telling one-of-a-kind women's stories."

Her summer reading: "I have to do some catching up. I'd like to read the Kate Atkinson (Life After Life). And Z (Therese Anne Fowler's novel about Zelda Fitzgerald). And The Flamethrowers (by Rachel Kushner). "